Liquid Courage
by Jameson Rook
Summary: "He knew she only drank whiskey when the PTSD symptoms got the best of her. His heart twisted as he thought of her waking up in an empty apartment, her screams echoing off of her bare walls and cold, unanswering bedsheets." Not a finale fic. Caskett.


_**Disclaimer: Castle and all of its characters belong to Andrew W. Marlowe and ABC Studio Productions. "We Owned The Night" belongs to Lady Antebellum.**_

**Tell me, have you ever wanted someone so much it hurts?**

**You're lips keep trying to speak**

**But you just can't find the words.**

**I had this dream once, I held it in my head.**

**She was the purest beauty, but not the common kind.**

**She had a way about her that made you feel alive.**

**And for a moment, it made the world stand still.**

**Yeah, we owned the night.**

It was late. Actually, it had passed late and looped back around to early again. It was an hour reserved for insomniacs and authors.

Rick had been hunched over the laptop for so long that his shoulders were as tight and throbbing. He leaned back in the desk chair, the plastic creaking quietly and kicked his feet up on the Oak desk. He sipped the scotch slowly, crunching one of the ice cubes thoughtfully. He'd had enough of the liquid to have him feeling plesantly buzzed, but not drunk. He occasionally like to have a drink to take the edge off of the writer's block.

Nikki and Jameson had been especially difficult to deal with since the end of the last book. He couldn't seem to grasp where they should be in their relationship anymore. He just wasn't getting...the vibe, the emotional connection to them that he had in the first three books.

He was shuffling to the kitchen to refill his glass when the knock on the door came. He couldn't say that he was surprised to see Kate staring at him, her green eyes shimmering and her face flushed. She was drunk. She was always drunk when she showed up at this time.

Usually she would settle into the tastefully distressed leather of his couch and spilled her guts about how the stresses of the job and the tension between her and her father had gotten to her. It would end when he lifted her when she passed out and carried her to his guest bedroom, tucking her tenderly beneath the dark maroon bedspread.

This time, however, he felt that there was something different. She strode into the loft purposefully, her hand grasping the fluted neck of a Jack Daniel's bottle. He knew she only drank whiskey when the PTSD symptoms got the best of her. His heart twisted as he thought of her waking up in an empty apartment, her screams echoing off of her bare walls and cold, unanswering bedsheets.

"Kate." He breathed, pulling her into his arms tightly. She buried her face in his shoulder, stifling her sobs against the warm, smooth skin where his neck hollowed out into the space around his collar bone. He held her for so long that he lost track of the time.

It had been so long since he'd gotten to hold her like this, the last time she'd shown up was before Alexis had gone away to Columbia two months before, that he didn't want to let her go. The subtle scent of cherries mixed with the heady scent of whiskey on her breath flooded his mind as he took a deep breath, his face buried in her hair.

"I'm tired, Castle." She whispered, her hot breath ghosting over the bare skin of his neck. He supressed a shudder and silently cursed himself for wearing a tank top with his faded jeans instead of a t-shirt.

"You know that the guest room is always open if you want it. You need sleep, Kate. You've been running yourself ragged these past few days." His voice was low, the timbre gravelly and rough.

"That's not what I meant." She pulled out of his embrace enough to leave his hands hovering on her waist, and so that she could look him in the eye. There was something different about her this time. A thick, musky scent filled the air and her eyes shone a kind of desperate need that he knew he couldn't deny her if she asked him.

"I don't understand."

"I'm tired of waiting for some divine sign from the universe that we are supposed to be together. I want to throw caution to the wind. I want to dive into life, Rick, and I want to do it with you." She leaned closer and nuzzled his nose with hers gently. His breath caught in his throat, causing dizziness to flow through him, for a moment he felt as though he might faint. "Isn't four years of torture enough for the both of us?"

"Are you sure about this, Kate?" He breathed, his hands moving down her sides and slipping beneath the flimsy fabric of her tank top and caressing the silken skin of her lower back. He rubbed his thumb over the intricately woven black lines of the tattoo on her right hip bone. He had discovered the black and purple rose the first time that she'd come to his house, drunk off her ass and her shirt had ridden up to reveal it.

The ribbon that had been tied around the black stem, just below the open deep purple petals had her mother's name scrolled across the surface of it. He had yet to mention it to her, preferring to allow her to think that he still had no idea about it, but in actuality, it had become on of his favorite features about her.

"Always." She replied, her words spoken directly against his ear before her teeth closed gently over it. He groaned low in his throat before pulling her into a deep and passionate kiss.

**You had me dim the lights, you danced just like a child.**

**The wine spilled on your dress but all you did was smile.**

**Yeah, it was perfect, and I hold it in my mind.**

**Yeah, we owned the night. **

His fingers were shaking as he lifted the shirt over her head slowly and dropped it to the floor. The low light of the fireplace that crackled in the living room cast shadows across her face, but gave him enough light to see her sun-kissed skin. His eyes roamed over her hungrily, freezing when they reached a point that they recognized.

It was an angry, purple-red pucker marring otherwise perfect flesh. His mind flashed back to the day that he'd almost lost her as the fingers of his right hand moved up to touch the scar. The skin was rough, and hardened, mirroring what that day had done to her soul. To both of them.

He bent to drop a soft kiss to the scar, his lips brushing over the skin and pouring every bit of love that he'd had pent up since that day in the cemetary and, if he was being honest with himself, long before then. He whispered the words 'so beautiful' into the skin softly.

When he pulled away, he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes as she leaned to his counter and set the whiskey bottle on it. Her hands framed his face and pulled him into a more chaste, sweet kiss.

"I love you, Rick." She whispered, her eyes remaining closed even after they had pulled apart. He lifted her in one swift movement and carried her into his bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him with practiced ease.

Rick laid her across his dark bedspread carefully, placing open-mouthed kisses down the column of her throat as he followed her down, the comfortable weight of his body against hers enough to draw a sigh. He nipped and kissed his way down her chest before moving to removing her black lace bra. When he turned back to her after dropping it to the carpet, all ability to breathe normally had been stolen from him.

Her breasts lay open to him, the darker, taut nipples staring up at him tauntingly. When his teeth closed around the first one, Kate arched into him, her hand burying itself in the soft locks of his hair to hold him in place. He nipped the sensitive skin, his tongue swirling over the offending area, drawing another whimper from her.

He let moved down her stomach and drug her pants off of her legs, placing kisses along the inside of thighs as he moved back up. His tongue swiped over her folds sensually, holding her hips so that she couldn't thrust up against his mouth. He gave a wicked grin at the frustrated growl that she made, lifting her head to glare at him.

He thrusted his tongue inside her once again, the tip of it flicking inside her opening until she cried out, her hands gripping his hair so tightly that it caused him to wince. Rick slipped his finger inside her, moving it at a pace that had her writhing and gripping the bedspread so tightly that her knuckles were ghost white.

"Please, Rick." She whimpered, her eyes tightly shut. He flicked his tongue over the bundle of nerves as he pumped his finger fast. Her chest heaved as stars began to blossom behind her closed eyelids. A few more thrusts of his finger and the scrape of his teeth over the nub had her tumbling over the edge and gasping, crying out his name like a prayer.

She was still coming down from her orgasm when he shucked his own clothes and moved up the bed, pulling her into a kiss. She hummed against his lips, tasting the tang of herself still lingering on his tongue, and caught his lower lip between her teeth gently.

"That was...wow." She whispered, a laugh hovering in the back of her throat. Rick nipped her jaw line and grinned.

"Yeah, you can say that again." He chuckled, shivering when her finger tips brushed over his chest. Her nails scraped gently over his nipples before she pinched one of them lightly, drawing a yelp of surprise from him. Her laugh was lost into the flesh at the juncture of his shoulder and neck when her teeth sunk into the flesh.

A bruise had formed on his skin when she pulled away, placing an apologetic kiss to it. She ran her finger over the skin softly, watching the outline of her teeth darkening.

Her fingers skittered up the underside of his hardened length. His jaw went slack and he thrust against her wandering fingers, needing more friction to soothe his painfully hard erection. Kate leaned forward enough to place her lips against his ear.

"Make love to me, Rick." How could he do anything but oblige? He slipped himself inside her until he was buried to the hilt, both of them groaning at the fit. Rick had never imagined that they would be this perfect together, but she hugged every inch of him, and he filled every crevace of her like they were built to complete each other. The wet heat of Kate surrounded him so completely that it threatened to overwhelm him, his vision blurring from the sheer pleasure of it.

He waited a moment, kissing her deeply until she adjusted to his size, and began thrusting slowly. He focused on the beautiful flush that had crept up her neck and was making its way up her face. On the ragged breathing that filled the space between them, though he couldn't be sure if it was coming from her or him. He focused on the steady cadence of their bodies sliding together, the wet sound of their sweat colliding and the rasp of desire from both of them.

He felt her muscles quivering around him, her stomach clenching rhythmically as she neared the edge once again. Her head arched into his mountain of pillows, her hands clutching his shoulders.

"Let go, Kate. I won't let you go. I promise. Look at me, Kate." He growled into her hair, picking up the speed of his thrusts to push her over the edge. He felt the curl of heat in the pit of his stomach telling him he was close as well. She let her eyes flutter open and her gaze locked with his as her body exploded around him. He tumbled over the edge right behind her, his muscles tightening as he held himself over her, sweat dripping from his body onto the bed.

His arms quivered and he allowed himself to lower his body and rest on her, not quite putting all of his weight down, until he could collect himself enough to roll off of her. After lots of wiggling and manuvering, he finally had both of them under the heavy comforter. Kate's head was resting on his chest, listening to the slowing beat of his heart, her fingers tracing abstract patterns on his chest.

"I love you, Richard Castle." She whispered, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips.

"And I love you, Katherine Beckett. I'm glad that we finally got over that dramatic sexual tension." He smirked, giving a half-assed attempt to dodge the playful slap that she leveled at his chest. He ran his fingers through her hair until her breathing evened out and she fell asleep in his embrace.

He watched all of the worry lines that had been in her forehead since the day that he'd met her disappear, and all of the stress that her job entailed melt away. She looked peaceful.

Rick tried to remember a time when he'd felt this happy in his life. The only thing that surpassed it was the day that Alexis was born, and that was only a slight bit better. He placed a kiss to her forehead and let his eyes flutter closed, but not before he sent a silent thanks to ol' Jack Daniels. Lord knows how long the tension between them would've continued if it weren't for a bit of liquid courage.

**When the summer rolls around, **

**And the sun starts sinking down,**

**I still remember you, oh I remember you.**

**And I wonder where you are, **

**Are you looking at those same stars again?**

**Do you remember when we woke under a blanket**

**All tangled up in skin,**

**Not knowing in that moment we'd never speak again?**

**But it was perfect, I never will forget,**

**When we owned the night.**

**Yeah, we owned the night.**

_** Thoughts? Reactions? Suggestions? Drop me a review and let me know.**_

_** Much love, J. Rook**_


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